靈安尊王

Qingshan King Festival (2022青山王祭)

The annual Qingshan King Festival (青山靈安尊王), one of Taipei’s most important religious and cultural attractions, successfully wrapped up for another year in early November, and once again I was there for most of the day taking photos with both my digital and film cameras.

The festival, which seems to get bigger and better every year continues to cement its position as one of the most important religious festivities on the nation’s calendar of events, and once again attracted large crowds of people, helping to keep both old and new traditions alive.

The revival of the festival over the past decade, and the popularity it currently enjoys (especially with regard to attracting the youth of Taiwan to come out and enjoy this cultural experience) is an amazing success story, and not only has it helped garner more interest in the cultural, historic and religious history of the district, it has also helped show that Bangka can be a pretty cool place to live.

One of the reasons for the surge in youth interest in the festival (and the district itself) is in large part thanks to Bangkha’s rockstar legislator, Freddy Lim (林昶佐), who has worked tirelessly to promote the festival with events that have brought young people back to the district to celebrate its history.

Bangkha has suffered for decades due to its aging population and for it’s reputation for having a seedy environment and the decline in the district has been a problem for the local government for quite some time. In recent years however, the youth of Bangka have started to come back and investing in their neighborhood - opening up hip new restaurants, cafes, and bars, which in turn is helping to bring the district back to life after years of neglect.

Link: TokyoBike Taipei Cafe

Helping in his capacity as the district’s legislator, Freddy has helped to promote the Qingshan King Festival on an official level ensuring that government funding and support is available for these events.

For most politicians, that would be where their support comes to an end, but Freddy has gone back to his roots as the frontman of the black metal band Chthonic (閃靈) and helped to organize the Roar Now Bangkah (萬華大鬧熱) indie music festival, which lasts for about a week leading up to the Qingshan King Festival, bringing youth from all over Taiwan to the district.

Link: Celebrating a God’s Birthday with a Temple Rave (No Man is an Island)

If you weren’t already aware, the Qingshan King Festival, falls on the days between October 20-22 (on the Lunar Calendar) and is essentially an event where a Taiwanese folk-religion deity, known as the “Qingshan King” (青山王) comes out of his temple to inspect the neighborhood he calls home.

Coincidentally, it’s also a celebration of the his birthday!

Filling a role similar to that of the City God (城隍爺), the Qingshan King and his entourage parade through the streets of Bangka, inspecting homes and businesses, banishing evil spirits and bringing good luck to the locals.

As the sworn protector of Bangka, part of his role is to visit all of the places of worship within his territory to say hello, and every temple in town makes sure to prepare for his arrival. While some might wonder why a god from a deity the size of Qingshan Temple (青山宮) is so important, especially when it has neighbors such as Longshan Temple (艋舺龍山寺) and Qingshui Temple (艋舺清水巖), the historic and cultural importance taking place here is something that cannot be understated.

All of this activity makes for a pretty lively event with loud music, fire crackers, fire works, and thousands of people parading through the streets, bringing traffic to a standstill. While this might all sound like a great time, not every resident of the district appreciates all of the noise created by the several day-long festival. So as the festival has grown in popularity, officials have had to come up with ways to streamline the event and reduce the impact it has on the general public - and it seems that some of these efforts have been working as 78% of people polled in 2021 were satisfied with the steps that were taken to improve the festival.

Nevertheless, the event tends to be a loud one, so if you plan on attending in the future, a good pair of earplugs might be a good investment.

Being that I’ve written about this event on a few occasions, my plan is to keep this one short - Today I’m just here to share some of my photos of the event, which I’ll split up between my digital photos and my film shots.

Over the years, I’ve taken part in this festival on several occasions and have more or less figured out how to navigate the massive crowds with ease. This year, I spent all of my time following Qingshan Temple’s Eight Generals Troupe (艋舺青山宮八將團) on their procession through the city.

As part of an ongoing project of mine, I’m a bit more keen to follow them around than the rest of the parade, which I’ve seen in years past.

To briefly explain, the “Eight Generals” (八家將) are literally translated into English as the ‘Eight Home Generals’ and at Qingshan Temple, the group consists of eight officers and one young boy (引路童子), who serves as their guide through the streets of Bangka.

Each of the generals carries an ancient weapon used for torture, and they are meant to appear quite menacing as they are gods of the underworld who have evolved over the century to act as spiritual bodyguards for important deities such as the City God (城隍爺), Mazu (媽祖), Wangye (王爺) and the Qingshan King (青山王) or any deity who has a role in managing our world and the underworld, which corresponds to the theory of yin (陰) and yang (陽).

Every one of the generals is tasked with performing a specific role, which can be likened to supernatural policeman for both the living and the dead. Some of them are in charge of investigating and catching evil spirits (lock generals) while others are in charge of judging them and dealing out punishment (cangue generals) to whatever evil supernatural forces might be lurking in the district.

Their primary duty during the Qingshan King Festival is to clear the area of evil spirits as they make their way through the streets of Bangka in preparation for the arrival of their master. Their job is a serious one, so you are unlikely to see them smile (they do from time to time).

The number of generals that appear in these groups tends to vary, but at Qingshan Temple, you’ll find four generals with green faces (lock generals) and another four with red faces (cangue generals). For reference, the names of the generals who form the front of the line are General Gan (甘爺), General Liu (柳爺), General Xie (謝爺) and General Fan (范爺). The four in that make up the rear are named after the seasons, the General of Spring (春大神), the General of Summer (夏大神), the General of Autumn (秋大神) and the General of Winter (冬大神).

Link: Ba Jia Jiang (八家將), the Generals (Gods of Taiwan)

If you find all of this as fascinating as I do and would like to learn more about the festival, I recommend reading the other articles I’ve written about the festival in the past so you can get a better idea of what’s going on.

Qingshan King Festival: Part One | Part Two | Part Three


Digital Photos

Film Photos


Qingshan King Festival (青山靈安尊王)

The annual Qingshan King Festival (青山靈安尊王), one of Taipei’s most important religious and cultural attractions successfully wrapped up earlier this week - The festival, which continues to solidify its role as one of the most important religious events on the yearly calendar has once again proven quite successful in attracting large crowds of people and more importantly, helping to keep old traditions alive.

More commonly known to locals as the Bangka Temple Festival (艋舺大拜拜), the annual event has played an important historic and cultural role in one of Taipei’s most storied districts for several centuries, but you might be surprised to learn that it was once in danger of almost completely disappearing.

The revival of the festival over the past decade and the popularity it currently enjoys (especially in terms of attracting the young people of Taiwan to come out and enjoy this cultural experience) is an amazing success story and not only has it helped garner more interest in the cultural, historic and religious history of the district, it has also helped show the sons and daughters of the area that Bangka is actually a pretty damn cool place to live.

The festival celebrates the birth of the Qingshan King (青山王), a folk-religion deity hailing from the Quanzhou (泉州) area of Fujian Province (福建省) in China where many of the areas residents trace their ancestry.

Falling on the days between October 20-22 (on the Lunar Calendar), temple followers parade the temple god around the district with his troops, oracles and generals to inspect homes and businesses and banish evil spirits as well as bringing good luck to the locals.

As one of the largest and liveliest temple festivals in Taipei and the entire district looks forward to this special time of the year where residents often celebrate into the early hours of the morning.

Since I’ve already blogged in greater detail about the festival, I’m going to keep this one short.

It is important to note however that as the festival continues to grow, additional events and activities are always being added to the already jam-packed three day schedule.

So if you have a chance to attend you’re going to be treated to something new and exciting.

Qingshan King Festival: Part One | Part Two | Part Three

This year I spent most of my time I did have following the popular “Lead Generals Troupe” (官將首) taking their portraits as they paraded through the streets of Bangka.

The generals are one of the most popular aspects of any of Taiwan’s temple festivals and they always put on a great show.

If you want to know more about this special festival, I recommend checking out the links above.

Likewise, if you want to know more about Taipei’s most historic district, some of the links below may interest you:

Temples: Bangka's Top Three Temples (艋舺三大廟門) | Bangka Longshan Temple (艋舺龍山寺) | Bangka Qingshan Temple (艋舺清水宮) | Bangka Qingshan Temple (艋舺青山宮)

Street Photography Posts: Monga | Bangka | Wanhua

For now, enjoy some of the photos I took.

The Lead Generals (官將首)

The Parade (暗訪)


Qingshan Temple (艋舺青山宮)

This post is a continuation on my series of posts on the historic Monga (艋舺) district of Taipei. In the first two posts I shared photos of the Qingshan King Festival which is a lively Taoist festival which takes place every year in late November/early December. Today I'm continuing the series with a more in depth look at Qingshan Temple, the place where the 'king' has made his home for the last 161 years. If you haven't seen the first two posts in the series I've linked to them below: 

Qingshan King Festival (青山靈安尊王) - Part 1 | Part Two


The Bangka district of Taipei is the most historic and culturally important areas of the city. Hokkien immigrants from Fujian settled in the area hundreds of years ago bringing with them their culture and religious beliefs as well as traditional Southern Chinese architectural styles that influenced the whole of Taiwan.

Situated on what is known as “Taipei’s First Street” (台北第一街), the Mengjia Qingshan Temple (艋舺青山宮) is one of the oldest temples in the city and is probably the best examples of Southern Chinese temple architecture left standing in the city. The temple was built in 1854 and while it doesn't predate its neighbour Longshan Temple (龍山寺), it was left intact after World War 2 which devastated parts of the city and most of the original Longshan Temple which had to be rebuilt after the armistice.

If you take a walk along “Taipei’s First Street” you will notice that a lot of the buildings are built in the Baroque style (which means the façade of the buildings have a Western and Asian fusion.) These types of buildings are usually put on display on most of Taiwan's “old streets” like the ones in Daxi, Hukou and Beipu which I have previously covered - but are also an indication of the age of the buildings in the area around the temple. 

Qingshan King (青山王)

The Mengjia Qingshan Temple was built in between two of these buildings and while it isn't a huge temple, it is certainly grand in its importance to Taipei and the people of Bangka district. The temple is dedicated to the Qingshan King (青山王) or the “King of the Green Mountain”  (a metaphor for someone who led a just/good life) a popular Taoist deity hailing from Quanzhou (泉州) in today's Fujian Province.

The Qingshan King is a popular local deity who in life was a well-known general during Three Kingdoms warring states period in Chinese history (220-280 AD.) His real name was Zhang Gun (張滾) and served in the Kingdom of Wu (東吳) under emperor Sun Quan (孫權) who sent Zhang to Quanzhou where his success and skills of running the city led to his deification as a protector god who has the ability to protect his followers from sickness and disease and also to punish evildoers like his contemporary Cheng Huang Ye (城隍爺) better known as the City God.

Qingshan Wang (青山王)

Qingshan Wang (青山王) in his Sedan

Today the Qingshan King is popularly worshipped due to the belief that he has the power to dispel disease. Interestingly, between 2002 and 2004, when the SARS epidemic was ravaging Asia, the temple became an extremely popular place among Taipei residents looking for a bit of supernatural protection from the epidemic.

According to legend, centuries ago fisherman from Fujian brought with them a statue of the Qingshan King and when they arrived in Bangka they found that while walking from the waterfront that they were stuck in one spot and couldn't budge. This was taken as an omen and Taoist priests were called to perform some ceremonies to which they found out that the god determined that this was the spot where his temple should be built.

Shrine room on the third floor

The statue had arrived at the right time as Bangka was an economic powerhouse and because a plague was affecting the people of the area. The Qingshan King’s reputation for having the power to dispel disease gave the people of Bangka the incentive to donate more than enough funds for the temple to be built and soon the amount of followers of the temple swelled as people looked for divine protection from the plague.

The popularity of the temple and of the Qingshan King has lasted over 260 years in Taiwan and that popularity is put on display during the annual Qingshan King festival, one of the liveliest temple festivals in Taipei which lasts for three days between October 20th and 22nd on the Lunar Calendar. The temple puts on a spectacular show of ancient culture and Taoist religious displays that aren't as common today as they used to be.

As with most other Taoist temples in Taiwan, the temple has a main deity and then several others as well making it a convenient place to visit. The main shrine of the temple is of course dedicated to Qingshan Wang, but there are shrines dedicated to other Taoist gods including Matzu, the Ba Jia Jiang (八家將) and several other gods of the underworld who are entrusted with dishing out punishment and supernatural justice. In all there are over fourteen shrines in the temple with the second floor having five shrines and the third floor having seven. 

The temple is nestled in between two buildings and was constructed using the Fujian-style three courtyard design. It was built with exceptional quality wood and stone and the stone-work on the pillars as well as throughout the temple are quite significant. Each shrine room has a really cool octagonal shaped plafond ceiling which they say was constructed without the use of nails. These octagonal style ceilings never cease to amaze me and to think that people had the ability to build these things in the 18th century is pretty fantastic.

The temple is open all year long and while it isn't really a tourist destination like Longshan temple, it is a pretty cool place to visit. If you have the opportunity to be in Taipei during the Qingshan King festival it is something that you won't want to miss as it puts Taiwanese culture on display in a big way. If not I still recommend a visit to the temple at any other time of the year as you won't encounter as many tourists!